[Seattle PI] On Tuesday Boeing celebrated delivery of the first airline 747-8 Intercontinental, the last in a series of new airplanes. Now the new model has to prove itself in service to bring what Boeing hopes is a pile of new orders.

“This was hard. This was six years of solving problems,” Pat Shanahan, vice president and general manager of Airplane Programs at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said at the Future of Flight Aviation Center, beside Paine Field airport and Boeing’s Everett wide-body aircraft plant.

Lufthansa Chief Officer Carsten Spohr called the airplane a “new flagship,” adding: “The queen of the skies is the result of great teamwork, of two great companies working together.”

Lufthansa legally took delivery of the airplane April 25.

The airplane is scheduled to enter service June 1, after crew training and installation of some extras at Lufthansa’s base in Frankfurt, Germany, said Nico Buchholz, Lufthansa’s executive vice president, Group Fleet Management.

Lufthansa plans to start with service from Frankfurt to Washington, D.C., adding Los Angeles, Chicago and destinations in India soon after, and then switching routes from 747-400s to Intercontinentals as it gets more of the new airplanes…..